ABSTRACT
The Althusserian philosophy of science does not posit relative truth values as the distinguishing hallmark of the demarcation between science and ideology. In failing to do so in theorising literary criticism, it ends up obliterating the distance between literature and ideology it initially intended to theorise. Literature is like scientific knowledge insofar as its descriptions of reality do in fact correspond to it. The ideological mystifications concerning value and social relations which the practical utilisation of exchange-values achieves is, directly contrary to Terry Eagleton, that which is empirically imperceptible except in its discursive articulations. Science in moving away from ideology is moving closer to the real. The proximity of ideology to the real is illusory. Literary criticism's objects of knowledge are to be found in reality; they are to be found in just those aspects of reality which are studied by the various social sciences and philosophy.
